How to fix HTC Vive Grey Screens, Losing Tracking and Powering Off 

Thank you, thank you, thank you!! You inspired us to try installing a new USB card with a Fresco Logic FL-1100 chip , and it worked. We are so thrilled! This saved us from scrapping our Vive unit as we thought the [hugely expensive] headset was useless. It kept grey-screening every 2-4 minutes for about a minute or so, and then would repeat that cycle. We thought it was overheating (mentioned on blogs a lot). Also lots of configuration errors, controller or base station or headset not detected, etc etc. Nothing we tried worked - we went through every other trouble-shooting suggestion we could find, including all Steam VR suggestions. But installing a new USB card seemed like a massive step, so we didn't do that until your brilliant video showed us that it is relatively easy. And it worked first time. We suggest others try the Steam VR step of removing all existing USB drivers first, as it works for some, but in our case not. A couple of comments which we hope will be useful to those reading this, and perhaps you (forthenext) can add to your notes directly under the video? We are in the UK, and we bought (for only £20 on Amazon UK) an updated model of the Inateck card you recommended, the KT4006. A little bit of investigation shows it has the same all-important Fresco chip you recommend. You can download the Inateck driver for this card directly from their website. It comes as an *.exe file. After you have physically installed the new USB card, you simply run this *.exe file after Windows (ours is Win 10) has finished installing the default (Windows) drivers. I rebooted after running that Inatech driver (not sure if that was necessary). (My point is that it seems unnecessary to visit Fernando's driver page; plus the Fresco explanation / link on his page is a little confusing, at least for those unfamiliar with extracting drivers, at the time of writing this). A note for those not familiar with installing cards in your PCs: the KT4006 requires a single empty PCIe x1 (= PCI Express x1) slot on your motherboard (search Google for all these words, plus images, plus instructions). The point that matters is that you need one PCIe slot available, so you need to check your motherboard before buying the USB card (but most PCs should have one, at least). The good news is that you can install a PCIe x1 card into any bigger slot, such as PCIe x16; they look way too big but it doesn't matter - again Google this for an explanation. And it's very very easy to do. Really, go ahead, you can do it! ;-) It would have saved us days of research and trying out all sorts of suggested trouble-shooting had we just installed a new USB card. And, finally, SHAME on you Steam VR and HTC Vive for not improving your troubleshooting guides for replacing a USB card. VIVE, you take up to a thousand quid off us for your units, and Steam you take hundreds for our games, but you can't be *ssed to spend ten minutes updating your "help" page??!! Why o why do both your sites not mention this Fresco Logic FL-1100 chip as being all important (thank you, forthenext, for this vital piece of intelligence!), or at least explain which chips are known to cause problems [surely you know; you must document this in your call centres??], and why have you not updated your (single!!) recommended card (KTU3FR-2O2I), which is difficult to find here in the UK (and elsewhere?), with at least one other current model, but preferably several, given what a terrible experience this is for those suffering this USB problem!? Frankly we should all be compensated for the staggering amount of time required to resolve this problem. Rant over. Thank you again forthenext. Game on! :-)

This fixed it for me! Thank you so much! So annoying that a driver update caused it to stop working.

DUDE! I started having these exact same issues two years ago. Searched and searched for a solution but no one knew how to fix it Including the vibe support. My vibe has been collecting dust in the closet for two years. I’m buying this usb card and trying this out THANKS!!!

For me I reinstalled NVIDIA! Thank you so much!

I had a similer problem where after a week of fiddling vr would work for 1 or 2 days then start acting up and I presumed it was how I had set up my vr tracking stations but I also have a asus z170-a motherboard and I recently got a new usb driver extention card and it fixed everything this video helped a tonne and solved my problem I was starting to go crazy after 6 months of trying different solutions and researching thank you a tonne this video deserves more views

Right, this video is what I was looking for. Seriously, this needs sharing. I've spoke to a Vive rep and this is the advice they gave and it works! ( sidenote, the USB card is not necessary. Simply clear the USB devices and disable power management and BAM) However, I need to do this every time apparently (From what I know), and that's infuriating. Is it the same using the card because it's virtually impossible to solve this issue on a laptop I found! Anyway, really well done on making this video because it's accurate and really needs showing to be community.

Dude Thank you very much for this information, it helped me fix the same issue that you had.

Thanks for uploading this. I'm having the issues you described. My setup used to work flawlessly but now I experience gray screens and sudden loss of tracking on the controllers despite no changes to my hardware or environment. I have purchased the Orico card and will check back in after I've received and installed it.

I was having this issue ever I bought this thing 2+ years ago. I rarely played then stopped playing cause this was part of the reason where the video would go grey in some scenes and sometimes stay grey for a 3+ seconds. It became so annoying. I tried so many different things but couldn’t figure it out. I was starting to think I had a defective one. So watched this video but I just did the reset of the USB and disabled the power management in SteamVR like another user said and BOOM no grey frames or video dropping out!! So awesome!! Hopefully it’s gone for good. But I will def keep the replacement of the USB card in my back pocket for sure. Thank you so much!!

im having an issue where my pc is playing a disconnecting sound, but its not disconnected ik that for a fact. My display on the headset will go black after about 30 secs - 2 mins then it reconnects after 5-10 secs, and that goes on over and over while in games like VR chat. would like any help i can get. I have a Cosmos Elite btw.

Damn. Definitely gonna try this. I know it was the usb I almost end up selling my VR.

Can anyone help me with this? I start playing vr and half an hour later it starts blinking grey and within like 2 minutes it just stays white. While it is blinking, I have to keep the headset in one place. Then the headset just goes grey. Then I turn my pc off and let the headset sit for like an hour and it works fine. I think it might have something to do with the headset getting hot or at lease warm. It is definitely not a software problem because I was talking with vive support and I tried everything. Anyone else having this problem? Edit: Controllers and base stations are fine btw. Just the headset I think.

I think I have the same problem.thanks. Dude!! I'm going to try this.

Cheers for that!

I don't have any pci slots left does anyone know a way to fix this without using a pci slot

Legend this has been driving me insane. all was good until windows 10 update.

Cheers, my vive is now working again..

I've had the same issue only would freeze my PC so had restart everytime, bought the steam recommended usb from Amazon and working fine now thank you for your video helped me so much vive support is useless,.

i was confused cause for a second i thought i was watching a fitz video xD

Just thought I would add this.... Please cover up any mirrors or bad sun glare u spend all this time taking things apart and it is likely that u have a reflective surface throwing off your tracking and making the controllers jump all over the place

Grey screen at cable? I can't remember grey screens with cable. But with the TPCast wireles system. First, I have separated all wifi channels. TPCast wifi is far from other wifi on channel 36 (5180Mhz, first 5Ghz channel on TPCast Wifi Router). Asus GT5300: First 5Ghz on ch 64 (5320 MHz, last channel on 5Ghz 1), second 5Ghz (for gaming etc.) on ch 100 (5500Mhz, last channel on 5Ghz 2). But I also have disturbing gray screen dropouts. I have the impression that it depends on the game how often and how long the dropouts are. It seems like there are no dropouts in some games. Vive Home also has dropouts from time to time. When loading an app, it seems to be particularly strong. The problem is said to not occur with OpenTPCast. But you shouldn't have to pay 25 for the manufacturer's mistake. Is it a software problem? I am using the current TPCast software version on the power box (SD card). With microphone support. Perhaps games with internet connection are more affected. The Lab etc. are less or not affected. OK, there is internet, but only for the rang list. We need a "QoS" for this USB data in the Wifi / LAN network. Perhaps it could help.

Will this also help with the Vive Pro?

I am experiencing it two hours ago, it killed 1.5 hours of my life. I haven’t fixed it yet so will look into your solutions. =( but I have been seeing a lot of “USB not detected messages”

I have 11th gen i7 with a gigabyte b560m ds3h motherboard and i am having a lot of issues with the tracking I cannot touch my headset cus I will lose tracking its so sad that the newer the technology to worse the USBs lol this is driving me nuts its hard to be in full-body on this system no matter how good it is :(

I'm having an issue with my Vive like, sometimes it happens but not always. What is it? Basically if I look to and angle while playing, I lose tracking, and I don't know what causes it. I can do anything anywhere look where I want except and angle. I can stand anywhere if I look at that position I lose tracking. It's not a fixed point int the room, it's an angle. I tried to remove reflecting surfaces, resetting everything, updating and nothing works...

Thank you for sharing this great solution, although I haven't tried it yet. Anyway, I have just bought the VIVE PRO2 headset, and I am facing same promblem like the grey screen flashes. It happens so frequently that I can hardly play any games. I have been wondering if my computer doesn't meet the VR hardware requirement ( i9-10900k, nVIDIA RTX3070, 32G RAM) , but I decide to try your solution first. At the same time, I am also having problems playing 4K VR videos, it runs extremely unsmoothly and that makes me want to upgrade my graphic card. Does anyone having the same problem?

but i'm on a laptop, how do i fix it now?

3 years later and it's still a problem on the Vive Cosmos Elite.

Sadly, I have a laptop so I guess I am just fucked...